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The Star has learned more about the mysterious black piles on the U.S. side of the river just east of the Ambassador Bridge.

The petroleum coke — or ‘petcoke’ as it’s called — recently started to be produced in much greater amounts at the nearby Marathon Oil refinery in Detroit.

The refinery, which sits behind Zug Island next to the I-75 freeway, completed a massive $2-billion facility upgrade last fall allowing it to process heavy Canadian crude oil brought in by pipeline from the Alberta oil sands. The refinery processes 120,000 barrels per day of crude oil.

Petroleum coke is a fine powder which gets distilled and filtered out from the crude. It’s resold for such uses as producing asphalt or as a replacement for coal.

Power plants have increasingly turned to burning petcoke because it is 25 per cent cheaper than coal, said Stockman, who authored on a recent report on the growing use of the fuel and its environmental impacts.

Petcoke looks and burns like coal, but is dirtier because of higher carbon emissions, Stockman said. Although not officially listed as a toxic or hazardous product, it can contain heavy metals or sulphur found inside tar sands crude oil, he said.

“You wouldn’t want this stuff in your water (being next to the riverfront),” he said. “It could be leaching heavy metals and sulphur.”

Huge piles of black material are being offloaded at the Transflo Terminal in Detroit. The material is a petroleum coke product filtered out of crude oil by the nearby Marathon Oil refinery. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

Petcoke has been handled in refineries in Texas, Louisiana and California, but is often loaded directly on to ships and sent overseas to be burned in locations such as China, Stockman said.

“They don’t keep it on site for long periods,” he said. “They export millions of tons of the stuff.”

Based on the amount of barrels being processed in Detroit, Stockman estimated 1,720 tons of coke were being produced daily.

“It’s a byproduct of the dirtiest oil on the planet,” he said. “That’s what they are trading in.”

The large riverfront industrial and railway property on the Detroit side where the coke is stored is owned by Michigan billionaire businessman and Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun.

The property — purchased around 2005 — is leased to CSX railway. A company affiliate, Transflo, has been storing the coke.

An employee at Transflo’s head office in Florida directed The Star to contact CSX ‘s head office, which did not respond to messages Wednesday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also did not respond to messages seeking clarification on its studies of the potential dangers of petcoke.

Coal or coke being stored along the Detroit River has long been linked to tumours in fish, said University of Windsor researcher Doug Haffner, who studies exposure and impacts of chemicals in the Great Lakes. He described it as a bigger problem than mercury or PCBs.

“The biggest issue on the Detroit side is they are storing it right on the shore, so with any rain it moves right into the river,” he said. “You couldn’t put this in a worse place. Unless they are treating the runoff — and I doubt that — this should not be allowed in this day and age.”

The chemicals in petcoke may themselves not be toxic, but when it metabolizes in the human body or fish “that’s when troubles happen,” Haffner said.

The Great Lakes research professor has watched in shock as the massive black pile across the river multiplied in size in recent weeks.

“My first thought was it was earth,” he said. “But then when I realized it was not — I thought ‘here we go again.’ I know we are coal-dependent, but there are better methods of storing this. You don’t see this on the Canadian side. We have the Detroit River remedial action program and this is counter to where everything is going in terms of managing the river.”

Huge piles of black material are being offloaded at the Transflo Terminal in Detroit. The material is a petroleum coke product filtered out of crude oil by the nearby Marathon Oil refinery. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has scheduled an on-site meeting with CSX officials to learn more about what’s going on along the riverfront, said Andy Hartz, southeast Michigan district co-ordinator for the agency.

“We are making contact with the company to schedule an on-site visit for people from our air quality division and our water resources division,” he said. “I don’t think we can speculate on what more we can do, what’s down there or what’s going on until we meet with them.”

Hartz expects the visit to Transflo will occur within the next five or six business days.

Dealing with such massive quantities of petroleum coke — especially those being generated from Alberta tar sands — is a relatively new issue for MDEQ, which is trying to get up to speed on the product and where it falls under regulations, Hartz said.

Since last fall, a new crude oil pipeline has been bringing heavy crude to Detroit from Alberta, confirmed Brandon Daniels, a spokesman for Marathon Oil. He also verified that petcoke has started being produced in much greater amounts since the refinery’s expansion in November.

He couldn’t say whether CSX and Transflo has been the sole customer taking in all the petcoke from the refinery, but Marathon in Detroit has been “selling it on the open market.”

“It a very powdery substance so it’s kept in bins or covered to keep it from blowing around. Everything is covered and kept tight. It’s not something volatile or toxic, but since it is a fine powder there is a messiness factor when dealing with it.”

Windsor’s residents might be in store for another whammy if Detroit Edison cuts a deal to purchase the petcoke to burn at its downwind coal-burning power plants in Monroe and River Rouge, said Stockman.

Environment Canada indicated Wednesday it has received an official complaint about the petcoke being stored along the Detroit River.

“The substance is located in the United States, and as such, is under their purview,” said spokesman Danny Kingsberry. “Environment Canada has received a complaint and is monitoring the situation.”

The International Joint Commission, which oversees transboundary issues on area waterways, says it has been notified about the petroleum coke being stored along the Detroit River, but will not act until receiving a formal request from the federal government, said spokesman Bernard Beckhoff.

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